Video Game / The Silver Case

The criminal of legend awakens.

Confused or unsettled by this cover? Good, 'cause so are we.

The Silver Case is the first game ever developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, written and directed by Suda Goichi (before the handle SUDA51) for the original PlayStation in 1999. A text-heavy adventure game, it follows the detectives of the fictional city of "Ward 24" in Japan as they hunt down Kamui Uehara, a serial killer who has murdered various political figures before, but was caught long ago by one of the detectives. Highly experimental, The Silver Case makes use of as many visual mediums as possible, putting 3D environments, 2D stills, live-action-videos and even animated clips together to tell its story. The game alternates chapters between two storylines: Transmitter, which focuses on the detectives of the Heinous Crimes Unit; and Placebo, which focuses on a freelance reporter.

While a Cult Classic in Japan that stands proudly among Suda's other dark, psychological early works, it did not make it overseas for the longest time. After years of trying (and one failed attempt to port it to the Nintendo DS), Suda finally got a chance to get it localized with a faithful multi-language PC remake released in October 2016, and a PS4 port in April 2017. You can watch the promotional video here. Two stories were released to promote the remake. The first story, Pre-Lunatics, is a manga included in the Deluxe Edition of the game that serves as an Interquel to Moonlight Syndrome and The Silver Case. The second story, Placebo Prequel, was posted on Twitter on a fictional account belonging to Tokio Morishima, set shortly before Placebo. The story was translated and can be read here.◊

Following some patches, the remake contains two new chapters that serve as Sequel Hooks. The remake for one of these sequels, The 25th Ward: The Silver Case, was announced in mid-2017 for release in 2018.

Part of Suda51's "Kill the Past" Thematic Series/Shared Universe, along with the tragically Japan-exclusive Moonlight Syndrome and, most notably, Stealth Sequel Flower, Sun and Rain, killer7, and the direct sequel The 25th Ward.

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Today's TROPES:

• all lowercase letters: The Transmitter case titles as they appear in the uniform title cards (e.g. lunatics, decoyman...).
• All There in the Manual: Lots of plot details are shown in the manual's character chart, including characters' full names, the structure of the police and security departments, and even some characters who don't actually appear anywhere in the game. For example, the FSO Party leader is a man named "Sundance".
  • "Case #4.5: Face" is a tie-in novel set between Cases #4 and #5. It includes more information that the game itself does not cover, such as the current Kamui, not the Format Kamui of 1979, is named Kamui Fujiwara. It also contains some inconsistencies between itself and the game, though not to the level of the Hand in killer7 information book, which frequently contradicts itself.
• Ambiguous Situation: There are quite a few plot points about which it is never clarified if they are literal or not. Particularly the idea of "transmittable crime"/crime virus - is there really a disease causing people to commit crime, or are the characters just talking about how crime can induce imitators and inspire hysteria thanks to the news and the Internet? Depending on the answer, it either can or cannot justify the HCU's tactic of extrajudicial murder. Similarly, when they say that Nezu controls the city like a video game, does that mean he just has access to high-level infrastructure, or is Ward 24 partially a simulation? Also an example of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The "Placebo" storyline puts you in the shoes of the reporter Tokio Morishima, who's been hired to cover Kamui Uehara, leading him to indirectly follow the events of the "Transmitter" storyline from the outside.
• And the Adventure Continues: In Case #!: tamura, the remaining HCU members—Akira, Kusabi, Sakura, and Kousaka (from #3: parade)—being called in to investigate a new case.
• Anti-Climax: The truth behind the Silver Case, to Kusabi himself at least. He tells Akira that it actually involved 10 senior citizens having ripped out the original Kamui Uehara's silver eyes, then they proceeded to all physically fight each other over them. Apparently, this Kamui was not an assassin at all—just a civilian with an unusual ability. The only surviving senior then implanted Kamui's eyes into himself; and Kusabi, unaware of what the eyes do for those who possess them, shot him and assumed him dead. Kusabi found the whole situation to be hilarious...and unbelievable, which likely led to Kusabi lying to his superiors about what had really happened. Likely not helped that this man who got the eyes and became immortal—the man Kusabi shot—is Uminosuke Hachisuka, mayor of Ward 24 under his son Kaoru's name, and grandfather of Chizuru Hachisuka and Tokio Morishima.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In the case of the remaster. Normally, controlling your character is divided into "Movement", "Contact" (for interacting with features and people in a location), and "Implement" (your inventory), along with a fourth "Save" function for opening the Save menu. These four controls are normally used by exiting one to use another (e.g. using an Implement, then switching to Contact to speak to a character). However, the Movement control panel allows the player to activate Contact via the C key on the keyboard, reducing the amount of menu interactions it would otherwise require.
• Arc Words: "Kill the past" (過去ヲ殺セ kako wo korose). This manifests in the story in a number of ways:
  • Meta-example in Lunatics: the characters who die in this case are three protagonists from Moonlight Syndrome, Suda Goichi's last game under Human Entertainment.
  • The eponymous Inciting Incident of the game saw Kamui murder a government official and later, 10 senior citizens—another literal case of "killing the past". Or so we're led to believe.
  • #1: decoyman sees the phrase appear in a promotional video made by Kamui and his partner Ayame, but the real manifestation of "killing the past" is Ayame killing the three women that have sired Kamui's children (the ones who are at the shelter exhibit), then attempting to kill herself.
  • The death that #2: spectrum focuses on is the result of Koichi pushing the killer, a grown-up, off of a balcony. In other words, the next generation killing its predecessors.
  • #3: parade sees Sumio Kodai killing his past: Working with his fellow "Mikumo Boys", the three orchestrate their revenge on the Yukimura Zaibatsu, involving Chairman Yukimura's kidnapping, the chairman blowing up Snow Tower while he and his corrupt management are still inside, and the remains of Mikumo 77 being destroyed.
  • #4: kamuidrome sees ordinary people leave behind their old lives to become part of an online cult dedicated to emulating Kamui, the man who is falsely believed to have uttered the phrase "kill the past".
  • #5: lifecut sees most of the Heinous Crimes Unit killed off, one by one by one. Of all of the official members as of this chapter, only Akira (you), Kusabi and Sakura remain^note With Sumio Kodai arrested and jailed, he technically doesn't count as one of the HCU anymore. It is also the chapter where Kusabi finally kills his past, accepting that the world is not simply divided between normal people and criminals; and eliminating some of the people who control the 24 Wards.
• Art Shift/Medium Blending: As mentioned above, several visual styles and techniques are used throughout the game. The interface used to show these pieces of media to the player is called the "Film Window", which takes advantage of Grasshopper Manufacture's limited resources at the time.
  • The Placebo reports' portraits and art cuts are in an entirely different style, to emphasize how these chapters are viewed through a different perspective.
  • #0: lunatics has a blue-tinted black background with text strings flashing across it, with the top labels in orange.
  • #1: decoyman and *1: YUME have dark-blue backgrounds and red labels.
  • #2: spectrum and *2: HANA have yellow backgrounds with Japanese katakana flashing across it. On top of that, Spectrum has light outlining around its 3D objects.
  • #3: parade is Deliberately Monochrome (save for sparingly-used red highlights), and makes a heavier use of anime cutscenes. In the original game, the art cuts resembles the anime cutscenes; in the 2016 version, it's closer to the usual style but with very high-contrast shadows. Only the last few art cuts and shots in Parade ditch the monochrome color scheme, and the trope does not apply to the 3D and art cuts of *3: TSUKI, Parade's corresponding Placebo report.
  • #4: kamuidrome is predominantly green, with digital text being typed out in the background.
  • #5: lifecut is predominantly black, with occasional sepia inserts.
  • white out prologue is entirely in the style of the game it's a Sequel Hook to, The 25th Ward.
• Awful Truth:
  • The Shelter Kids project was a joint operation between the FSO and TRO/CCO factions in Ward 24 to create obedient assassins out of over 2500 children. Many of those children grew up to become the characters the player encounters—and plays as—in the game's present.
• Batter Up!: Subverted. #4: KamuiDrome sees Furuya grabbing a bat to attack someone who's coming to visit him in person, because he thinks it's one of the people he met online who were about to kill him. It turns out to be fellow net-browser "Neutral", real name Nakama.
  • Outside of this, baseball seems to be a background element in The Silver Case. A few meeting between characters take place in the Harakiri Batting Center. Likely a result of Goichi Suda spending time at a batting center himself.
• Big Bad: Kamui Uehara is the mysterious Serial Killer plaguing the 24th Ward who Akira and his fellow detectives are trying to catch. Until it is shown that, at least currently, he's in no state to be doing much of anything, let alone commit murder, and there are actually several Kamui. The true villain is Nezu, expert programmer and leader of the 24th Ward, who masterminded the creation of the Kamui assassins and all the crime plaguing the city for his own amusement. And behind Nezu is none other than Ward 24's mayor, Uminosuke Hachisuka, who has taken his son Kaoru's place thanks to his silver eye…
• Big Bad Wannabe: At the start of #5: lifecut, this trope is discussed in regards to Method Tank (from #4: kamuidrome) trying to surpass Kamui Uehara, the serial killer that they idolize. They already faded into obscurity under a month, as they were just kids on Internet forum trying to look cool but little else.
• Breather Episode: Case #2: "Spectrum", which also serves as your character's first official case under the Heinous Crimes Unit. Even though it deals with murder and suicide, you arrive on the scene after it happens, most of its content involves you hanging out with a little boy who was responsible for killing the suicide suspect for Hikaru's death, and it takes place in a peaceful apartment building during the day. There's also a lot of jokes and pop culture references. Finally, Sumio and Kusabi are on a largely uneventful stakeout for the entirety of the case, bored out of their minds and trying to cope with it. Aside of a Jump Scare from a ghost, it's a fairly laidback case before the next escalation in the story.
• Brick Joke: Established in spectrum and played out by tamura: Kusabi really needs 50,000 yen, Big Dick.
• Brown Note: In Ward 24, crimes can be "transmitted" like a virus, usually by being near an infected person. Maybe.
• Call-Back: to various elements in the story, such as plot points and case titles:
  • #1: Decoyman refers to Kamui Uehara being used as a distraction from the true culprit behind the case.
  • #3: Parade refers to either protest parades or violent riots. Kusabi also mentions fairy tales near the end of Parade, which was the same subject that Sumio had broached in the beginning of this case (the story around Mikumo 77). *3: TSUKI also has The Bat (actually Hiseki borrowing the Bat as a temporary "mask") telling Tokio the same fairy tale.
• CamelCase: How KamuiDrome and LifeCut are formatted in their window labels.
• Character Development: Tetsugoro Kusabi begins in lunatics as a thug for the state, shooting Ryo in the head and then unloading his gun into the dead teen's corpse, referring to him as garbage. However, the events of #3: parade shake his worldview: Kusabi's partner in the HCU, Sumio Kodai, is revealed to be part of the plot against the Yukimura corporation, and the destruction of Mikumo 77. Kusabi has to come to terms that his partner is one of the threats to the state that his unit is meant to destroy, and that society is not as black-and-white as he likes to think it is.
• Chekhov's Gun: A vague one appears in decoyman, where the player character finds a doll near the Kamui Case's secret victim in the sewers. Based on Kusabi and Kodai's reaction, it's an object in the real world, but it receives no explanation. Later on, while searching the Shelter Exhibit for Ayame, the player finds one of Kamui's kids, who mentions that her doll is missing. This suggests that Ayame, the killer, is familiar with the children living at these shelters.
• Child Hater: Tokio is perhaps a more downplayed example of one, as in *2: HANA, he can't get Koichi to talk to him.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Kusabi is the greatest offender of this. It turns out that Sumio is not as better in that department as he appears.
• Cult: Method Tank from #4: KamuiDrome.
• Cyberpunk: Downplayed, but definitely present, especially in #3: Parade with the unidentified terrorist having a cybernetic eye of some sort, and #4: KamuiDrome.
• Dénouement Episode: Tamura (originally "Danwa"), although there are actually two post-climax chapters, #25: Whiteout prologue and *6: YAMI.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In "Parade", the Yukimura company town Mikumo 77 and the manmade disease that afflicted the town. bring to mind the Chisso Corporation and the Minamata disease borne of dumping mercury waste water into the bay in the 1950s. The Mikumo Boys' kidnapping of the Yukimura chairman is based on the 1984 kidnapping of Glico company president Izaki Katsuhisa.
• Driven to Suicide: #4: KamuiDrome sees a pop idol named Sayaka Baian jump off of her apartment roof after learning that her private life had been filmed and broadcast online without her knowledge.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Inverted, as it's a much more serious (if surreal) story than subsequent games by Grasshopper Manufacture, including its far more outlandish sequel in The 25th Ward. The fourth wall also remains relatively untouched.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Republic a.k.a. the Special Security Unit, the Administration Inspection Office's anti-crime/terrorist unit. It doesn't do them much good since Kamui—or rather, Ayame—almost wipes them out.
• Environmental Symbolism: The Art Shift in each chapter tend to symbolically and thematically reflect the current mystery. It's most notable in #3 parade's Deliberately Monochrome styling, with focuses on Kusabi's black-and-white perspective of morality. As he's forced to grapple with how his job requires him to arrest his best friend, the color returns to the world, demonstrating his grasp on the reality of his "disposal" job.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • #0: lunatics introduces Kusabi driving home from work to the soothing music playing on the car radio...only for him to change off of that station, expressing contempt for the "fuckin' lullaby". He even groans about the song on the next station^note Amusingly, this track is titled "Kusabi" in the soundtrack, muttering that the radio plays "nothing but shit". Kusabi then focuses on the road, wondering if it was always this long, and muttering that weird things happen on nights like this.
  • In #1: decoyman, the report about Kamui Uehara escaping IMM Hospital. He murdered his counselor with what is described as "a customized harpoon gun". When a team of four 24 Wards Republic operators try to apprehend him in "Operation Secure Kamui", Kamui kills two of the them and leaves the other two in critical condition. Playing through this event as Akira reveals that Kamui gouged the murdered officers' eyes out while being hunted down, by the way. Except this is a big subversion, though, as it wasn't actually Kamui; his real establishing character moment is when you find him tied up in a closet, docile. The one who tied Kamui up—Ayame Shimohira, the person you and Sumio are interviewing—was the perpetrator of Sonoda's murder and Republic's demise.
    • Can count as a Double Subversion, since "Ayame Shimohira" is basically a woman with the Kamui personality.
  • *1: YUME starts with Tokio driving home while monologuing about his line of work as a journalist and how he got himself into accepting the job to investigate Kamui Uehara because he was broke and drunk. Tokio's first line of dialogue is directed to his pet turtle Red, talking about the client for the job: Tokio's old "asshole" boss Inohana.
• Episode Zero: The Beginning: A Grasshopper Manufacture tradition, starting with #0: Lunatics. The Placebo reports don't follow this scheme, instead following from #1: Decoyman with *1: YUME like normal.
• Everyone Has Standards: Nakategawa is likely a lolicon and agent of the group that created the Kamui Maspro. But he goes into Tranquil Fury when he has to order Hachisuka to hunt their former colleagues, even going so far as to try to kill Munakata as he is from the group that made the Ayame models and so activated Hachisuka.
• "Eureka!" Moment: In *3: "TSUKI part 2", Tokio asks the seller at the Mulholland cigarette shop how she watches TV, to which she responds "I just turn up the volume so that I can see". This clues Tokio in that Hiseki (the person who was falsely believed to be The Bat) could have been the blind Mikumo Boy after all, able to work with peripherals to use the Internet in spite of his disability.
• Eye Scream: One of the Mikumo Boys was blinded during the riot by having his eyes gouged. The original Kamui was killed for his silver eyes that grant an eternal youth of some sort and most of the documents found in the shelter shows they were doing ocular surgeries on the children to see if they could replicate it.
  • *6: YAMI has Tokio dreaming about his past as a Shelter Kid, when he'd had one of his eyes removed by the staff and started screaming.
• Face–Heel Turn: Lifecut sees the Heinous Crimes Unit go from morally and ethically questionable, to outright hunting Akira and Kusabi.
• First-Episode Twist: Kamui Uehara is an empty and docile shell of a man, incapable of committing murder and decidedly not the antagonist of the game.
• Foreshadowing: Something that The Silver Case is full of, but highlights include:
  • During #0: Lunatics, it is Kusabi, not the expected Sumio, who is present for the case. Indeed, Chizuru informs Kusabi that Sumio has left the office already. In the bigger picture of Silver, this hints that he might not be the young protagonist that players were expecting to relate to...
  • In #1: Decoyman, Kodai admits to Ayame that he has a sharp nose, but bad ears. As it turns out, his ears aren't just "bad". Kodai is actually deaf, and has been hiding it to pursue his goals in the HCU.
  • #1: decoyman and #2: spectrum see Sumio meeting and subsequently falling for Ayame, the perpetrator of the former case. Kusabi fails to understand Sumio wanting to wait for Ayame to be released so that they can "start our second life". He's failing to understand that Sumio Kodai himself is effectively a criminal, as #3: parade will show.
  • A small one in *1: Yume; in Tokio's apartment room, you can see a painting of a bat. At the end of the chapter, the chatroom you use gets broken into by a user who calls themselves "The Bat", the same person who contacted Akira in Decoyman.
  • #2: Spectrum's "title card", for lack of a better term, features a framed picture of a smiling child surrounded by white flowers on either side. This hints that Hikaru, Koichi's missing friend, is in fact deceased.
  • Also in Spectrum, when he scouts Akira for the HCU, Kotobuki comments that Akira is "almost built like a criminal". As it will turn out, that's because he is.
  • #3: Parade has Akira receive an e-mail from The Bat, who claims during his warning that Akira and Tokio are the same person. Then he admits that he was joking. By the end of the game, this claim ends up being technically correct, when you find out every detail about the Shelter Kids project.
  • *3: TSUKI Part 2 sees the culmination of a mass warning regarding a nasty computer virus—Morishima's desktop computer gets infected with said virus, which screws him to the point of messing with the player's interface as well (probably not intentional on the developers' part).
• Foil: Tetsugoro Kusabi and Daigo Natsume are members of opposing law enforcement factions in Ward 24. Both are fathers, but whereas Kusabi cares strongly for his daughter Toriko, Natsume brought his daughter Sakura into the Shelter Kids project as one of the Ayame Maspro stock.
• Fugitive Arc: In #5: Lifecut, Kusabi and Morikawa are declared "kill on sight" by Nakategawa. Morikawa is shot in the head (possibly by Kusabi) after getting into contact with Akira in the underground complex, but Kusabi ultimately survives the whole ordeal.
• Fully Absorbed Finale: #0: Lunatics is this to Moonlight Syndrome, the last game made by Suda at Human Entertainment before founding Grasshopper. The case ends with three of the major protagonists of M.S. being killed off for good.
• Halfway Plot Switch: At the start of *4: AI, Tokio is informed about the goings-on in relation to KamuiNet, and the chapter focuses on his side of that investigation, as usual. However, this gets almost completely dropped soon enough, as The Bat's repeated threats increasingly become more direct, so the focus shifts to exposing him once and for all.
  • Inverted with *3: TSUKI, in a sense. Part 1 ends with Tokio receiving the news of the Yukimura mansion explosion, which occurred very early in #3: Parade. Part 2 picks up 12 days later, however.
• Hell Is That Noise: During the Placebo reports, whenever Tokio and Akira cross paths, Akira's art cut is always accompanied by a very unpleasant electric-shock noise, which seems to reflect Tokio's gut reaction to him.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Midway through #5: Lifecut, Akira focuses entirely on tracking down the source of the Shelter Kids experiment. Eventually, you find out from an e-mail sent by Tokio that the entrance to the underground complex that leads to the laboratories is at the Mulholland drug store (where Tokio buys Placebo, his favorite brand of smokes), right behind its vending machine.
• Hiding the Handicap: It turns out that Sumio Kodai is actually deaf, to the great surprise of the other characters and the player. He understands people through a combination of incredibly adept lip-reading and special cell phone technology that vibrates against his ear in a code of particular bursts and frequencies which lets him know what the speaker on the other end of the line is saying.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: "Transmitter" chapters are "cases", prefixed with #s and possessing a normal numbering scheme...except for cases #0, #!, and #25. Meanwhile, "Placebo" chapters are "reports", prefixed with *s and going from 1 through 5 normally.
• Inciting Incident: "The Silver Case", named after Kamui Uehara's assassination of a government official and, later, 10 senior citizens. In the epilogue, tamura, Kusabi reveals that this was only the "official truth"; what actually happened is a lot more bizarre and too insane to tell his superiors back in 1979.
• Insult to Rocks: When Nakategawa comments on Furuya and Nakama's copulation by pure instinct, he compares it to the behavior of apes. Then he retracts his statement, having realized that it's insulting to the apes.
• Interface Screw: In *3: "TSUKI", Tokio opens an email that infects his PC with a virus, messing with the UI. It even affects the game's UI, though without the FESTA virus's nasty "data wiping" ability.
• Interim Villain: After Kamui Uehara gets taken into custody at the IMM Hospital, the plot moves on to the actions of the Mikumo Boys and Method Tank. He doesn't become actively involved again until the climactic chapter.
• Irony: The first person to speak Kamui's declaration "Kill that past" is Fuyuki, the Mikumo Boy whose mouth was stitched shut, in #3: parade.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Republic and Central both seem to have a very poor opinion of the HCU.
• Man Behind The Curtain: Who is Nezu, the man who provided the mayor Hachisuka with the idea of revolutionising the infrastructure of the 24th Ward, and the heart of the Kamui experiment? Just an unassuming computer nerd who ogles at women and happens to be a high-level programmer. Akira and Kusabi have no problems taking him out at all.
• Manchurian Agent: It's gradually revealed that the original Kamui Uehara's personality has been transmitted to various people via the Shelter Kids experiments. The personality would activate when someone is needed to eliminate targets.
• Meaningful Name: Ayame Shimohira's given name means "iris", as in the iris flower (アヤメ). Its other meaning is derived from ayameru (殺める)—"to kill".
• Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy: Kamui is a tool used by a faction of a government/criminal conspiracy based around real estate...as are some of the main cast.
• Never Suicide: When a suicide is reported in Ward 24, the Heinous Crimes Unit detectives intuit that it isn't a suicide. This is the case in #2: Spectrum, where the "suicide victim" was pushed to his death by a kid.
• No Antagonist: "Spectrum" plays with this, as the antagonist of the chapter is dead by the time it starts. You simply need to find out about the circumstances that led to that point.
• No Ending: Not the main plot itself, but Whiteout prologue abruptly ends after you are shot.
• One-Word Title: Transmitter and Placebo, as well as most of their chapters. The only chapter to avert this is #25: Whiteout prologue.
  • Transmitter may (or may not) refer to Kusabi's reference to a "crime virus" in #0: Lunatics.
  • Placebo refers to Tokio Morishima's favored brand of cigarettes.
• Psychological Thriller: One of Suda's darkest works.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kusabi and Kodai. For example, when talking with an IMM Hospital employee:
  Kusabi: That dick just won't shut the fuck up!
  Kodai: Well, it's sort of your fault. You were pretty rude to him...
• Red Shirt Army: Republic, sans the Player Character.
• Rule of Symbolism: Quite a lot of it, but one bit of symbolism stands out in particular; During most of the Placebo chapters, Tokio Morishima receives e-mails for a newsletter column on plants, which doesn't appear to have any relevance to his daily activities or the general plot. It turns out that this parallels the Shelter Kids project, which effectively involves children being bred and raised in a way similar to plants, in order to produce artificial silver eyes.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The original ending ended up being an aversion; it ends with a To Be Continued...? message, but the last minute cliffhanger events that trigger it aren't explicitly brought up in future games at all. However...
  • The updates given to the remastered version in 2017 added two new chapters which actually are real sequel hooks to Flower, Sun and Rain and the remake of The 25th Ward.
• Shout-Out:
  • The end cards impose a song title by Joy Division and New Order over the Moon, such as "Vanishing Point" for lunatics, "Bizarre Love Triangle" for decoyman, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" for spectrum, etc.
  • In #3 parade, one of Fuyuki's messages to Big Dick during the ransom exchange is "Take Me Higher".
• Thematic Series: As mentioned above, this game is part of Suda's "Kill the Past" thematic series.
  • This game is the first of Suda's games to explicitly use the very words the series is named for.
  • One of the minor characters in The Silver Case uses the phrase "flower, sun, and rain", which became the title of another game in the series. Both games are revealed to share the very same universe in the second one - mainly since the Flower protagonist Sumio Mondo is a clone of Silver's detective Sumio Kodai and FSR explains the origins of the silver eye.
• Tomato Surprise: The player characters, along with many others, is a human raised to become "Kamui" if the need ever arises.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The seemingly intended playing order of alternating between Transmitter cases and Placebo reports, although the player is free to choose their own order to an extent.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: "Operation: Secure Kamui" was Republic's attempt to…well, we'll let you finish that thought. Guess how it works out.
• Unusual Chapter Numbers: Transmitter cases. It starts at 0 and proceeds to 5 normally, but then goes to #! (Tamura) and then jumps to #25 (Whiteout prologue).
• Visual Novel: Of the sort that is technically an Adventure Game but has far more text than gameplay (like Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, for example), but with most of that text being character dialogue without little to no narration. This is even more true in the Placebo reports, in which the only gameplay throughout the whole storyline is either checking e-mail or reading Tokio's memos as he types them on his computer, or examining one of three other objects in your room (Red the turtle, the phone, and the window).
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Some characters go out in this manner, but this is especially blatant with the members of TRUMP, who are all killed by Kusabi long before you get to them.
• Wham Episode: "Lifecut" for Transmitter, and "AI" for Placebo.
• Wham Line: Late in #2: Spectrum, Akira talks with the Typhoon apartment manager, who brings up that Koichi's friend Hikaru, whom Koichi seems to believe is missing and/or trapped, in fact died of a heart attack. This explains why Koichi is so focused on his endeavors to "rescue Hikaru": he's in denial of his best friend's death.
  • #4: KamuiDrome sees Kusabi and Kodai having one-on-one conversations. While they lack any context labels such as location, it can be inferred from Kusabi's remark, "You're finished", that Sumio Kodai is now under arrest for his part in the Yukimura kidnapping plot.
• Wham Shot: An early one during "Decoyman", Sumio and the player discover none other than Kamui Uehara, tied up and gagged, and making no effort to resist.
  • Another early one, this time in "Parade": the Yukimura residence that Kodai and Kusabi were staking out for the entirety of "Spectrum"? Kodai sees something glimmer…and suddenly, the house blows up. Ditto for Snow Tower being destroyed in an explosion, this one triggered by Yukimura himself.
  • Near the end of the Placebo chapter "AI", Tokio meets up with Enzawa, who reveals himself to be the man who stalked him online with the handle of "The Bat" all along. Then Enzawa aims a gun at him.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Played with in #5:Lifecut. Kamui is finally executed by an elite commando squad, but there is still some work left to do, as Kamui's TRUMP team needs to be tracked down, as well as the labs where the Shelter Kids experiments were held, Kamui's contractor is still unidentified and Kusabi and Morikawa have gone missing...

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(A colored moon appears)
THE SILVER CASE
The 25th Ward IS COMING SOON..
Kill the past

F I L M
WINDOW